Although based on a play,unlike many Mankiewicz' s movies,this one is no "filmed stage production" style .It even sometimes recall Hitchcock's 'the thirty-nine steps " for the bulk of the action is a chase .
A strong performance by Rex Harrison (who would be the star of three other Mankiewicz works :" the ghost and Mrs Muir" " the overlooked "honey pot" and the largely underrated "Cleopatra " in which he was the best Julius Ceasar in the history of cinema),who is sentenced to jail (three years!)for what he considers a just act.Actually what happened to him could happen to anyone .That's why it's so easy to identify with him and to feel he had been treated unfairly.
"Escape" has two meanings :escape from jail for the convict ,escape from a world she does not fit in for Dora:she's going to make a money match ,because "she's tired of being poor" ,but she realizes ,after meeting the fugitive that she would live in a prison too.
This is an offbeat story ;the conclusion is not what the audience is expecting and may be off-putting for some viewers.God himself intervenes ,and ,as the priest says ,only Him can judge man,only his justice is infallible.Besides ,one of the hero's friends betrays him to get Judas' thirty pieces of silver.
